Animalis

by John Peter Jones

  “Hank, how dare you say that.” Grimshaw pierced him with her stare. She used Jax’s shoulder to help her stand. Hank shrank against the wall as she approached. “You would have murdered this creature in cold blood!” She stopped inches from his face. He tried to squirm away, but she followed him with her glare. “And you will be a maggot beneath the burning heat of your own guilt for the rest of your life.”

  She held Hank there, watching him. Her expression softened, and after a moment, she spoke to herself, “Pyramid?” She moved away from Hank and he relaxed a little. “A pyramid.” She pressed her fingers to her temple with a bewildered look. “And you’re saying it’s some kind of weapon?”

  Hank folded his arms over his chest. “They already used it once. Those adorable little creatures you let run loose in here could be genetic weapons. It’s a machine that can alter DNA. All DNA. It created the Animalis, and it could destroy them. Or us …”

  Grimshaw closed her eyes, and a pain passed over her face that Jax didn’t think was possible on her. “Hank, nothing’s going to change what you did to this hyena.” Her eyes opened and she looked at him with pity. “You might not acknowledge its pain, or its value, but it’s there. I can’t give you any more justice than the guilt you will feel as you live with this, so I won’t try.”

  She stepped back and looked from Hank to Jax. “The pyramid. It was—I don’t know. I saw something, just before you came back.” She shook her head and scowled.

  Jax could feel it. She was struggling to find the words to describe what she had seen.

  “Like a dream, just out of reach.” She blinked and her scowl went away. “And it makes me afraid for what you’re getting yourselves into. You don’t think you know me, or I you, but I don’t want anything to happen to you. I have an idea of what’s going to happen when your teams try to enter that building. It might not help, but I have some equipment you could use.”

  Hank didn’t react, and Jax was still catching up with her change in tone.

  “Hodge?” Grimshaw called out. “Give me a hand here, will you? The emergency car is going to be here any moment, and we need to get this hyena out to it.”

  Hodge ducked his head through the door opening, his expression moving in and out of a snarl. “Yes, Hurley,” he said, but he stayed at the door.

  “You’re not coming,” Jax said to Grimshaw, “if that’s what you’re thinking. We barely made it back alive. The Animalis militants are trying to start something here, and we are right in the middle of it.”

  “I know, Jax. I know,” she said with a frown. “Something big is coming or Jesus wouldn’t have sent you here, but that isn’t what you’re worried about. Hank, you’re saying the conflict is going to be over soon?”

  Hank looked thoughtful, and Jax knew that a plan was already forming in his mind.

  “They’re going to be scattering,” Hank said. “What is it that you have?” His eyes flitted to menus in his retina monitor, but he continued speaking: “We have to surround the new warehouse so nothing can get away. I’m sending the location to the other teams now.”

  “Can you tell me more about this pyramid?” Grimshaw went to the wall and revealed a closet full of clothes. She pulled out something black, with arm and leg straps, and brought it to Hank.

  “A flight suit?” Hank just stared at it in her hands before finally taking it.

  Jax could see Hank hesitating, fiddling with the flight suit. His eyes were watching Hodge and the hyena. Right … He doesn’t want them to hear more about our plans.

  “Hodge, come here,” Jax said. “He’s unconscious. Grab his knees and let’s get him out of her.”

  That would give Hank the privacy to share more information. Hank and Grimshaw moved to the corner so they were out of the way. Little Hank leaped from Hodge’s shoulders and scurried away as Hodge came to the hyena. Hodge and Jax then carried the hyena out of the Atticus and through the midday heat of the courtyard. Some travelers stopped to watch them carry the bloody, limp body to the emergency car that waited there with flashing lights. They slid the body onto the padded cot and strapped it in. Jax pulled up a menu on the wall screen and put in the injury information, then he sent it off to the hospital.

  “Hodge,” Jax said as they started back to the plane. “Can you stay out here? Watch for anyone that might seem suspicious?”

  “Yeah.” Hodge nodded. “Good idea. I’ll just stay out here.” With a big, slow blink, his eyes relaxed and the hairs on the top of his head flattened out.

  Jax left Hodge and walked up the staircase. Before he reached the top, an icon of the captain appeared in his retina monitor—a video call. Jax felt a wave of dread, his body reacting to the recent memory of the orders to kill. The dread turned into a cold sweat as he stepped into the plane and closed the hatch. Hank and Grimshaw were still talking in the second cabin with the door open; their words passed over Jax without registering. He opened the first cabin and went in, closing the door behind him.

  Hernandez’s icon continued to flash, waiting to be answered.

  I have to answer, Jax told himself. The thought of standing up to the captain made his throat swell.

  Jax accepted the call and sent the face of the captain onto the wall screen. He held his arms behind his back and stepped away from the wall.

  Hernandez was in his own cabin, sitting in a black, thickly padded armchair. He was bent forward, resting his forehead against hands that were laced together. Hernandez hadn’t noticed the call had been answered.

  “Captain,” Jax said after a moment of silence.

  The captain raised his head and unlaced his fingers. “Jax,” he said. His words came out cautiously. “You left Hank … your unit.” He paused, but clearly didn’t expect a reply. “That was a hard thing I asked you to do, going in alone to get Hank back, and stopping those Animalis.” The chair groaned as he leaned his weight against the backrest.

  Jax stood straight and still. His finger began to tap against his palm behind his back.

  Hernandez nodded. “It was the right thing. Hank is hard to deal with, but his ability to solve problems is remarkable. The two of you are both at the top of your class. He was your friend even before joining the army, is that correct?”

  Jax nodded. “Yes, sir. We’re very close.”

  He watched as the captain leaned to his right and reached to his desk beside him. When he pulled his hand back, he held a small marble figurine. It looked like a Greek maiden, raising her arms and face to the heavens, draped in a flowing, loose gown. The captain’s thick thumb passed over her face absentmindedly.

  “Most people will never understand until they have killed an enemy before they had a chance to kill them—until you have had to watch friends die for your mistakes.” He turned the maiden over in his hand and gripped it tight. “When you have had to live for years with their faces appearing just when you think you have forgotten them. War can’t be won by idealistic boys that think war is a good, clean fight.” He loosened his grip and turned the maiden over and over in his hands. “This is not a playground game where you can say ‘Stop’ and run to a teacher if someone isn’t playing by the rules. These things are not people; they don’t have the moral conscience of people. They will kill and kill and kill until there are no more humans left to kill, and then they will kill each other.”

  Hernandez glanced at Jax. “I was worried,” he said. “The way you left, made me think it had been too much. It is for some people. They reach the edge of their ability to serve, and they turn back on themselves.”

  Jax stopped tapping his finger and changed the position of his hands.

  “Isn’t that what happened to your father?” The captain looked up at Jax.

  Jax swallowed and cleared his throat. When he spoke, his voice caught: “My … father? He—Yes, he came back home.”

  “But he had lost his arm. Was that enough? You grew up with the other military families. If that was all he had left in him, that was enough, right?”

&nbs
p; Jax shook his head, remembering the shame he had held for his father when he had come home. That was when he had started getting into fights at school, with the boys who thought Jax would run away like his father.

  All the adults had said that it was alright, though. His mother’s friends were always coming over. They’d pat him on the head and tell him his father had done a good job. It was better to have him home, they said—that he should be so proud of him. But it had all just been polite reassurances.

  Everyone that gave up and weaseled their way home early lost their honor. His dad had been given the option to continue serving with an artificial limb, but he chose to come home instead. He still got a new arm once he’d returned, and it didn’t hold him back.

  “Don’t you want to be just like your daddy when you get older?” the ladies would ask Jax. “Oh, you look just like him.”

  Jax had said “No!” once, but the ladies just laughed. “You’ve got your hands full, Kelly. He’s just like his daddy.”

  So Jax had just ignored them and moved to another room to play.

  “You’re a good soldier, Jax,” Hernandez said when Jax didn’t reply. “You’ve got instincts like your father. You can be proud of that. He deserved the honors he received.” He set the maiden back on his desk. “I want to hear that you aren’t going to run away again.”

  Jax opened his mouth, then closed it and nodded.

  “Say it with me,” Hernandez said. “I’m not going to run away again.”

  Jax took a deep breath. It was what Jax had already committed to; he shouldn’t need to say it. The ache in Jax’s chest came back—the point of his mother’s finger against his sternum.

  “I’m not going to run away,” he said, ignoring the ache.

  “I’m not going to leave my unit,” the captain said.

  “I’m not going to leave my unit.”

  “I’m not going to quit.”

  “I’m not going to quit.”

  “I’m going to follow orders,” Hernandez said with finality.

  Jax stopped. He didn’t want to say it. Now was the time to tell the captain he was wrong to order those killings. I can’t … I can’t do that again. They didn’t deserve to die—their faces, the bodies falling to the floor, because he had chosen to pull the trigger. He wouldn’t be able to ask Grimshaw to wash him clean again, even though he knew she would do it for him, as many times as he needed.

  But he couldn’t back down from what he had committed to. He wouldn’t quit. To keep moving, he would shut out the protests in his mind.

  “I’m going to follow orders,” he said.

  The captain nodded. He stood from the chair. “Not everything in the army is as difficult as what you are facing right now, Jax. You’re doing a good job.”

  Jax nodded and then saluted. Hernandez returned the salute, then the colors on the wall faded and the face of the captain flattened out and disappeared.

  When Jax stepped out of the hall and into the second cabin, Hank apparently had finished telling Grimshaw about the pyramid. Now Hank stood there, turning the flight suit around in his hand, checking the five-point harness, while Grimshaw watched him, shaking her head. Four heavy cylinders weighted down the edges of the flight suit, and Jax noticed a large section of power cells on the back. Hank looked up and glanced at Jax, but his expression appeared stony.

  Grimshaw kept shaking her head and finally said, “Please, try not to kill anything. Human or Animalis. You just need to destroy the pyramid and get out.”

  Hank turned to her. “What? Weren’t you listening? We’re not going to destroy the pyramid. We have to save it to understand it. It’s where the next battlefield is going to be, and we’ll be defenseless without it.”

  Grimshaw snorted a laugh. “Seriously? You think that the military is going to just hand it over to science? They’ll use it, Hank! And not just to stop the war. They’ll use it on anyone that threatens them—human or Animalis.” Grimshaw eyes showed an intensity that Jax hadn’t seen in them before. Then her focus seemed to drift from the moment, and she stared through Hank at something in her own mind. “They tried before, to kill them, in the forties. There were great big colonies of Animalis across Russia. When the first militant attacks started happening, the military wiped them out, whole cities at a time.”

  “We’re going in to get it, not destroy it,” Hank said, coming to stand beside Jax.

  Hank looked at him while he spoke, and Jax felt the cold sting within his heart again.

  Grimshaw looked at Jax with a solemn expression. Her eyes held his for a moment, until Jax looked away. “Alright. You’re right. It’s not my place to decide.” She turned back to Hank. “But, please, if it is what you think it is, it needs to be destroyed. Before anyone else finds out. It would be the worst weapon the world has ever seen.”

  Hank stepped away from Grimshaw and held up the flight suit for Jax to see. “While the other units come in from the street, we’ll land on the roof and enter from there. Hernandez doesn’t want you put into any danger, Miss Grimshaw, so I’ll ask you to stay out of it.”

  She nodded.

  “Jax,” Hank said, “you and I are going to arrive first and try to disable any cargo transports before they can leave.” He picked up the laser rifle he had brought back and held it out for Jax to take. “Rounding up anyone who flees will be second priority. All that matters is getting that pyramid.” He pushed the gun closer to Jax. “Are you ready to go?”

  Jax wanted to protest. Maybe long enough for the other units to finish the job without them. If he went out there again, he wouldn’t be able to escape again, run away like he did the last time. Could he do it? Kill again? If it meant it would stop the Animalis from using the pyramid? If it meant preventing a terrorist attack from the Animalis?

  “I’m ready,” Jax said, and he took the weapon.

  Chapter 9

  Narasimha

  The afternoon air should have felt like freedom. Jax’s short brown hair tossed and bounced, flattening against his scalp. The wind drowned out all other noise, creating a steady, powerful hiss in his ears. His stomach had reached an equilibrium between fright and exhilaration from the high altitude, sending a constant tingle through his body. With the four powerful superconducting fans propelling him from his back, he could imagine what it might feel like to be a bird. It would be wonderful.

  Hank was holstered securely to Jax’s chest, grabbing onto the harness straps like his life depended on it.

  The city curved and spread along the edge of the bay, where the red earth melted into the green-blue ocean. Hank had fed the location to Jax’s retina monitor, and the icon hovered above a building near the edge of the port city. Along the short flight, Jax had resisted talking about the shootout, or what the captain had said to him. He still wasn’t comfortable admitting all that had happened. But something still disturbed him about it.

  Jax messaged Hank:

  One thing that has been bothering me is why there was a human working with the Animalis in that factory. Did you see him?

  Hank’s reply came quickly:

  Yes, I saw him. It’s not too surprising. I think he was one of the people profiting from the Animalis conflict. Those were probably his shipments of weapons that the Animalis had. I’ve heard of humans being tried for crimes against humanity for helping them.

  The building was almost underneath them. Jax pushed the thoughts of the Animalis out of his mind. Feelings that he had felt earlier that day started to come back to him. The painful, vulnerable dread that he could be shot at any moment. Overlooking a simple detail, moving when he should have been holding still, or not reacting fast enough … His body was starting to ache from the tension the fear created. It was nothing like the military’s training he had been through. A sergeant’s constant degrading screams were unnerving and infuriating, but having his fragile life exposed, naked, before his enemy was different. How could he have prepared for it?

  The hiss of the wind diminished as they bega
n to descend. Jax would have to execute the landing perfectly to not send sound waves through the warehouse that would give away their landing spot. Their legs would be useless after having a hot shaft of laser bore up through their heels.

  The controls for the flight suit were linked to a small headband, which listened to signals from his brain. Jax pushed his mind up, an urge to resist falling, and the fans slowed their descent.

  He set down, with the subtlest tap, near the south wall of the building. Below them sat the garage bays and, if it was the same layout as the last building, a line of second-story offices they could drop down on top of.

  Hank released himself from the harness and stumbled forward. Jax caught him before he fell, but it sent an uncomfortably loud squeak reverberating into the air from his shoes sliding against the surface of the roof. Jax motioned for Hank to move with a wave of his hand. The two of them lightly crept away from the spot the squeak had emanated from.

  Jax messaged Hank:

  Run your ICT scan.

  Hank’s face was growing pale. He nodded and pulled the tool from his pocket. Holding it close to the rooftop, he swung the scanner from right to left.

  While Hank did the scan, Jax removed the flight suit. He set it down lightly and pulled the laser rifle from around his chest.

  Hank sent the scan and the image came into Jax’s monitor. The building was well shielded, blocking out the scanner’s gamma rays after three meters. It was just enough to see that there was a platform they could drop down to when they needed to enter the building.

  First, Jax would cut a hole, and then disable any cargo transports. Once that was done, Gillian’s unit on the ground would send in gas grenades to knock out any Animalis that were too slow to escape in time. The ones that fled would be stopped by the three units surrounding the building.